Is it possible to get the WD TV LIve interface on the WD TV Media Hub? I absolutely despise the interface on the media hub. I’ve been using the WD TV Live for a year and moving to the Media Hub felt like a huge leap backwards in usability. For example none of the view options when browsing thru videos is in my opinion usable and maybe its because I have too many movies. The WD TV Live let me quickly sort by Name, Date Added, Recently Viewed and get that sorted data in one of 3 interfaces or views, that are better then thee one in the Hub. I actually immediately unplugged the Media Huib and plugged back in my WD TV Live after Christmas and have yet to plug the Media Hub player back in. Thank God I had not yet sold my WD TV Live which I had originally planned to do. I want very much to love my Media Hub b/c the WD TV LIVE player was love at first use. Moving to the media hubs interface from my WD TV Live felt like stepping down to the iTunes interface from WinAmp (or any of the better-then-iTunes-interface-which-treats-users-like-helpless-idiots". I saw a guide on WD’s site about cre4eating themes so I’m p[praying this means there’s a way to get my good old WD TV Live interface back on the Hub. is there? Am I the only one who thinks the artsy-fartsy interface of the Media Hub is a huge step backwards from prior media players by WD? Thanks for listening
You may not be the ONLY one, but you’re certainly in the minority… Lots of people are buying the Hub ONLY because of the re-vamped UI.
What feature did you buy it for? It’s certainly more expensive than a Live + plus a hard drive, so there is something you liked that the Live CAN’T do, right?
I’m not understanding what you think is lacking; the Hub has better Sorting / Filtering capabilities than the Live / Live+ by a long shot.
So, if you can explain exactly what it is that you miss, then maybe one of the half-dozen Theme Creators that have popped up here can address it.
Thanks for replying. I bought the thing for all the hardware improvements and new functionality like pushing content to other devices and internal storage as well as connecting to services like NetFlix. i know the WD TV Live PLUS could do that but I had the WD TV live device and so Netflix and similar new features comparatively. What I did not expect nor want was the revamped interface. I certainly appreciate the change to allow for creating custom themes but clearly the original interface was not too dissatisfying for there were many users and happy users I might add of the pre-Hub versions which did not have this artsy like interface. Unless you have used the WD TV Live its difficult to understand since the Hubs interface is so different. had I never used any other version before the Media Hub I would not have given this a second thought nor found any issues. Its only because I have used a better interface before in a prior version of the WD Line of players that the Media Hubs interface is so unsatisfying. Since there a custom themes does anyone know if there is a WD TV Classic theme that lets you make the Hubs interface mimic the WD TV Live’s interface? What I’d like to see in the interface is a view that shows a thumbnail view (without previewing thee movie) where each folder (for those where the movie and its files are in a folder) has a folder icon that shows the jpg file within it (like the Thumbnails display in Windows Explorer when viewing a pictures folder) or each file (for those movie files that are self contained and not in a folder like an mkv movie) shows an image of the jpg in the container file that represents the movie. it would list these thumbnail images as 5-6 across and 2 - 3 rows down and in alphabetical order. Thanks
I’m not sure what you don’t like about the HUBs GUI. I have a WDTV Live and I like this much better. You said:
“What I’d like to see in the interface is a view that shows a thumbnail view (without previewing thee movie) where each folder (for those where the movie and its files are in a folder) has a folder icon that shows the jpg file within it (like the Thumbnails display in Windows Explorer when viewing a pictures folder) or each file (for those movie files that are self contained and not in a folder like an mkv movie) shows an image of the jpg in the container file that represents the movie.”
You are aware that there are 4 different views for Movies? Only one view has the preview. The new interface on the HUB (except for the main menu) mimics what the custom firmware for the Live & Live+ does, with Thumbnails at the bottom and Moviesheets.
Did you also know that you can push the filter/sort button that lets you quickly sort by date, genre, name etc.? Perhaps instead of “quickly unplugging it” you should play around with it some and get the feel for it.
edcarden wrote:
Thanks for replying. I bought the thing for all the hardware improvements and new functionality like pushing content to other devices and internal storage as well as connecting to services like NetFlix. i know the WD TV Live PLUS could do that but I had the WD TV live device and so Netflix and similar new features comparatively. What I did not expect nor want was the revamped interface. I certainly appreciate the change to allow for creating custom themes but clearly the original interface was not too dissatisfying for there were many users and happy users I might add of the pre-Hub versions which did not have this artsy like interface. Unless you have used the WD TV Live its difficult to understand since the Hubs interface is so different. had I never used any other version before the Media Hub I would not have given this a second thought nor found any issues. Its only because I have used a better interface before in a prior version of the WD Line of players that the Media Hubs interface is so unsatisfying. Since there a custom themes does anyone know if there is a WD TV Classic theme that lets you make the Hubs interface mimic the WD TV Live’s interface? What I’d like to see in the interface is a view that shows a thumbnail view (without previewing thee movie) where each folder (for those where the movie and its files are in a folder) has a folder icon that shows the jpg file within it (like the Thumbnails display in Windows Explorer when viewing a pictures folder) or each file (for those movie files that are self contained and not in a folder like an mkv movie) shows an image of the jpg in the container file that represents the movie. it would list these thumbnail images as 5-6 across and 2 - 3 rows down and in alphabetical order. Thanks
OMG edcarden, your text is incredibly hard to read, you should put some air into your texts to make them easier to read!
That said, I haven’t used any of the other WD media players, so I wouldn’t really know if the interface of the hub is a setback compared the the others, but I do know this:
Many people are creatures of habit (me too), so whenever things change drastically, we tend not to like it.
I’ve seen a lot of people talk about this new interface of the hub, but it’s mostly positive.
If I have understood your wishes correctly, there are alredy view options in the hub along the lines of what you described (4x4 and 3x3 thumbnails)
I’m agree with you, I think the WDTV Live Hub UI althought It’s better looking , but not practical, I prefer the WDTV Live UI and I hate the Thumbnail mode, Is it possible to add the thumbnail view of WDTV Live (all thumbnail without the white lable) I think the thumbnail view of WDTV Live is easier to see and navigate
@ Frillen
Sorry this is short but I lost all 5 nicely formatted paragraphs I had initially typed up to reply to you when I tried the PREVIEW tab on this boar5d. Not my day.
My reply looked bad because I was tired, it was late and in my defense the reply as I saw it was not 1 paragraph although I did not use the preview before posting so my bad on that.
i just figured out why there was the difference. I use Frfox with NOScript so my system is locked down and it appears at least 1 needed script/function/piece of code on the page was not running and so the post came across porrl;y formatted. Sorry.
A more pressing issue is that now that I’ve decided to embrace the change I have found myself getting 1 days use from the Hub before it decides to no longer recognize either of my 2 USB drives which it worked with fine the day before.
I tried restarting and plugging/unplugging everything but to no avail. I did find that when i swapped the Hub out with my good olde WD TV Live player it did recognize the USB drives so I don’t believe the problem is with the USB drives.
Any advice? The Hub came with no manual or any other helpful documentation so i don’t know what to try.
All the manuals are online in the support page, by the way…
If you check outthe screen shots at Flickr for the OGAHI custom theme the POSTER view listed in the 3rd image is almost exactly like the view thet the Hub is missing that the WD TV Live has and is what I was looking for.
I will download and test out these themes.
